Fiction and thanks
Thank you ellia_dreams, 
locknkey, and yggdrasilian for the glass hearts!
Interesting review of a book on debt, which itself sounds quite worth reading.
Daniel Abraham, The Dragon’s Path: Epic fantasy prominently featuring bankers! I enjoyed this first book in a planned series greatly, mostly because of Cithrin, the underage ward turned not entirely authorized banker when she’s sent out of a city that’s about to fall with much of the local branch’s wealth. There are also various nobles, including one whose pitiable awkwardness leads him to some very bad choices and another one who hates the proposed farmer’s council with input into governing enough that he’ll betray his king to stop it, and there’s an embittered general-turned-mercenary-with-a-heart-of-gold, but mostly there’s Cithrin. Also a spider goddess with plans to eat the world.
Karen Healey, The Shattering: Three teens whose older brothers all apparently killed themselves unite when one discovers a pattern-every year, an older brother who was present at their tourist-filled New Zealand town’s New Year’s celebration shortly thereafter dies, an apparent suicide. Their investigation leads them to magic and to deeper revelations about themselves. I enjoyed it; the teens were appropriately messy and distractable and brave, and there were villains but not inexplicable ones.
Rob Ziegler, Seed: Like Paolo Bacigalupi, who’s thanked, Ziegler has written a bleak post-climate change, post-American century future: in a world where the US is reduced mostly to groups of refugees who move south in winter and north in summer to escape the worst weather and take advantage of the remaining growing seasons, the currency of life is Satori seed: genetically engineered seeds that come from a company that’s turned itself into a living thing. Satori has also engineered Designers who make the seed; now one of them has defected-not to the US, as the government hoped, but for her own purposes. The stories of a soldier, a young refugee, and a Designer intersect in ways none of them could have foreseen. This is similar to pre-masterwork Octavia Butler-it’s about the power and constraints of biology, the multiple cruelties people inflict on each other when they are in need and when they see people weaker than they are, and so on.
Jacqueline Carey, Saints Astray: I think Carey’s parody of Tolkien is the best thing since sliced elves, and I bounced so hard off of her Kushiel series I think I left a mark. I basically liked the first book about Loup Garron, the genetically modified supergirl fighting for her people in a military outpost isolated from the rest of the US by fear and martial law. This sequel is fundamentally an extended wish-fulfillment sequence in which Loup and her true love Pilar get nice clothes, receive weapons training and other education, make friends, get lots of people to love them, and otherwise save the day. If you really loved Loup and/or Pilar, this book would be fun; otherwise it’s basically meh. Note: while I still consider this YA, they have a lot of not-at-all-graphically described sex (though they spend even more time saying “I love you, baby” back and forth).
Joseph Bruchac, Wolf Mark: YA in which the super-well-trained loner finds out that he and his family have a secret-one that might get him (and the girl on whom he’s crushing) killed. Spoiler: wolfish natures are involved. I don’t mind telling instead of showing in YA, but this was so repetitive that the drama was sucked out of it for me, plus Luke was a bit overpowered-yes, I believe a teenager would angst like this despite being smarter and faster &tc. than his challengers, but I got bored by my own angst and didn’t do much better with his.
Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear, The Tempering of Men: Ok, so you have your soulbonded wolves, with the resultant man- or men-on-man action come mating time. The first book found them fighting off a threat to their survival from the trolls; this book is instead a lot of journeys and smaller investigations and battles as the wolf-folk try to figure out to do without an immediate existential threat (and begin to detect the Roman-analogue threat from the south). No palaces, but the equivalent in palace intrigue: it's about relationships and planning for the future. If you liked the world of A Companion to Wolves, you may like this, but it's really the characters wandering around in that world rather than a new adventure specifically.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
locknkey, and yggdrasilian for the glass hearts!
Interesting review of a book on debt, which itself sounds quite worth reading.
Daniel Abraham, The Dragon’s Path: Epic fantasy prominently featuring bankers! I enjoyed this first book in a planned series greatly, mostly because of Cithrin, the underage ward turned not entirely authorized banker when she’s sent out of a city that’s about to fall with much of the local branch’s wealth. There are also various nobles, including one whose pitiable awkwardness leads him to some very bad choices and another one who hates the proposed farmer’s council with input into governing enough that he’ll betray his king to stop it, and there’s an embittered general-turned-mercenary-with-a-heart-of-gold, but mostly there’s Cithrin. Also a spider goddess with plans to eat the world.
Karen Healey, The Shattering: Three teens whose older brothers all apparently killed themselves unite when one discovers a pattern-every year, an older brother who was present at their tourist-filled New Zealand town’s New Year’s celebration shortly thereafter dies, an apparent suicide. Their investigation leads them to magic and to deeper revelations about themselves. I enjoyed it; the teens were appropriately messy and distractable and brave, and there were villains but not inexplicable ones.
Rob Ziegler, Seed: Like Paolo Bacigalupi, who’s thanked, Ziegler has written a bleak post-climate change, post-American century future: in a world where the US is reduced mostly to groups of refugees who move south in winter and north in summer to escape the worst weather and take advantage of the remaining growing seasons, the currency of life is Satori seed: genetically engineered seeds that come from a company that’s turned itself into a living thing. Satori has also engineered Designers who make the seed; now one of them has defected-not to the US, as the government hoped, but for her own purposes. The stories of a soldier, a young refugee, and a Designer intersect in ways none of them could have foreseen. This is similar to pre-masterwork Octavia Butler-it’s about the power and constraints of biology, the multiple cruelties people inflict on each other when they are in need and when they see people weaker than they are, and so on.
Jacqueline Carey, Saints Astray: I think Carey’s parody of Tolkien is the best thing since sliced elves, and I bounced so hard off of her Kushiel series I think I left a mark. I basically liked the first book about Loup Garron, the genetically modified supergirl fighting for her people in a military outpost isolated from the rest of the US by fear and martial law. This sequel is fundamentally an extended wish-fulfillment sequence in which Loup and her true love Pilar get nice clothes, receive weapons training and other education, make friends, get lots of people to love them, and otherwise save the day. If you really loved Loup and/or Pilar, this book would be fun; otherwise it’s basically meh. Note: while I still consider this YA, they have a lot of not-at-all-graphically described sex (though they spend even more time saying “I love you, baby” back and forth).
Joseph Bruchac, Wolf Mark: YA in which the super-well-trained loner finds out that he and his family have a secret-one that might get him (and the girl on whom he’s crushing) killed. Spoiler: wolfish natures are involved. I don’t mind telling instead of showing in YA, but this was so repetitive that the drama was sucked out of it for me, plus Luke was a bit overpowered-yes, I believe a teenager would angst like this despite being smarter and faster &tc. than his challengers, but I got bored by my own angst and didn’t do much better with his.
Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear, The Tempering of Men: Ok, so you have your soulbonded wolves, with the resultant man- or men-on-man action come mating time. The first book found them fighting off a threat to their survival from the trolls; this book is instead a lot of journeys and smaller investigations and battles as the wolf-folk try to figure out to do without an immediate existential threat (and begin to detect the Roman-analogue threat from the south). No palaces, but the equivalent in palace intrigue: it's about relationships and planning for the future. If you liked the world of A Companion to Wolves, you may like this, but it's really the characters wandering around in that world rather than a new adventure specifically.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.